Civil rights claim against ex-Plainfield officer heads to trial

The mother of teenage girl molested by cop claims township failed to check his background.

July 05, 2011|By Peter Hall, OF THE MORNING CALL

A jury will decide whether former Plainfield Township police officer Christopher Young abused the power of his badge to coerce his teenage neighbor to have sex with him in a scandal that rocked a quiet Slate Belt community.

More than four years after Young pleaded guilty to statutory sexual assault in Northampton County Court, a federal civil rights lawsuit by the girl's mother is scheduled to go to trial July 18 in Philadelphia.

The suit claims Young and the township violated the girl's constitutional rights by exposing her to abuse by a police officer. It alleges Plainfield Township Police Chief Dean Ceraul failed to properly investigate Young's background before he hired the officer.

Ceraul should have found red flags including Young's lies about his police training, stalking accusations and a questionable relationship with his high school teacher, whom he later married, the suit says.

"Who protects us from those who protect us?" asked Allentown attorney John P. Karoly III, who represents the girl's mother. "The township has a responsibility to ensure that these individuals, to whom we give authority to hold a gun and everything else, are qualified."

Karoly said the case has a strong similarity to that of Daviay Legrand, a 4-year-old boy who was killed when two Allentown police cruisers collided and one careened onto a sidewalk in 2007.

His mother, Crystal Legrand, charged the city's decision to hire police officer Brett Guth, despite his record of speeding, traffic violations and other summary offenses, demonstrated indifference to her son's safety. She agreed last month to settle her claims for $600,000.

"The police chief could have readily determined that [Young] should not have been hired, one, due to his inadequate training and, two, because of his risk of committing sexual crimes," said Bucks County attorney Robert Goldman, who will try the case alongside Karoly.

The case hinges on whether Young was acting as a police officer "under color of law" when he engaged in a series of trysts with the girl, whose identity The Morning Call is withholding because of the nature of the underlying crime.

A federal judge dismissed the case in 2009 after deciding there was no evidence Young's status as a police officer helped him victimize the girl. Rather, U.S. District Judge Thomas Golden reasoned that Young's close personal relationship with the girl's family allowed him to initiate the relationship.

The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals revived the case in April 2010, finding that a jury should hear the girl's testimony that she feared Young. She testified in a deposition that Young threatened to throw her brother into jail if she didn't have sex with the cop.

Allentown attorney Steven Hoffman said Young denies that he ever made threats toward the girl.

"It did not come up during the criminal case," Hoffman said. "The first time it did come up was during her deposition."

Hoffman also points to the girl's diary, where she wrote about having sex with Young, but never indicated that it was against her will.

Philadelphia attorney Sheryl Brown, who represents the township and Ceraul, declined to comment.

Karoly said he plans to call 15 to 20 witnesses who will testify about Young's background in New Jersey and his interactions with families in the Plainfield neighborhood where he lived.

According to court documents, Young told Ceraul that he had completed police training in New Jersey and was able to bypass Pennsylvania's police training requirements when he applied to become a Plainfield police officer.

In reality, he had washed out of police academy three times and only had training equivalent to that of a security guard, court papers say.

In depositions, witnesses said Young had been accused of stalking women in New Jersey. As a high school student or recent graduate, he lived with his special education teacher who was 15 years his senior and later became his wife.

As a police officer in Plainfield, he frequently made sexual comments about the victim and her teenage friends, the victim's stepfather said in a deposition.

According to court papers, Young began making comments about the victim when she attended a junior police academy Young helped establish at the Plainfield police department. Their sexual relationship began in June 2005 after a neighborhood bonfire and continued through that summer.

The victim testified Young, sometimes wearing his badge, would drive her to secluded spots in Plainfield to have sex.

After the victim's mother went to authorities and state police began investigating, Young tried to dismiss evidence of his DNA on the victim's underwear by saying that he did have a sexual relationship with the girl's mother and that she and her daughter shared undergarments.

The lawsuit claims Young and Ceraul slanderously repeated that claim and tried to intimidate the victim and her family by sending police officers to park outside their home and make unwarranted traffic stops.

Young and the township have filed motions to have testimony and evidence about Young's background before he became a Plainfield officer thrown out, contending that it is irrelevant to the case.

Young, 33, who pleaded no contest to a charge of unsworn falsification in addition to statutory sexual assault, served a 10-to-36-month sentence at SCI Graterford.